"Google is usually one of the first places students turn to when tasked with an assignment. Whether it’s for research, real-time results, or just a little digital exploration … it’s important they know how to properly Google. Lucky for teachers (and students, of course), Google has a handy set of lesson plans that are just waiting to be unleashed upon the leaders of tomorrow.

"While I understand there’s a LOT more to research than just Googling, it’s important to note that this is where nearly all students start their research. Therefore, it’s a critical skill if they’re going to start down the right paths.

"Below are 15 lesson plans courtesy of Google designed to make students better online researchers. They’re organized by difficulty and meant to help students (and everyone) become better online searchers."

This is a lengthy article detailing the relationship between 21st century skills and the adoption of technology as a way to promote growth in those skill areas. If you are here, you might find this very much "preaching to the choir," but the article provides a solid basis for understanding the need to integrate technology into education.

The World Economic Forum has published a new white paper called New Vision for Education: Unlocking the Potential of Technology; the link for the full report is included at the end of this article. The World Economic Forum is a not-for-profit international institution headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. Although the focus of this report is worldwide, the gaps in identified twenty-first century skills are very applicable to schools in the USA. In a powerful statement, the report says: “By the time students enter college and the labour market, deficiencies that have not been addressed earlier can be far more difficult and costly to remedy.” (p 8-9).

The report differentiates 21st century skills among foundational literacies, competencies, and character qualities. It sees foundational skills as what schools and systems traditionally teach and measure: literacy, numeracy, scientific literacy, instructional-communication technology literacy, financial literacy, and cultural and civic literacy. Competencies sited include critical thinking/problem solving, creativity, communication and collaboration. While curiosity, initiative, persistence/grit, adaptability, leadership, and social and cultural awareness are included in a category called character qualities. Appendix 1 includes definitions of 21st century skills.

The instructional cycle is referred to as a “closed loop” in this report. Beginning with clear learning objectives through the development of curriculum and instructional strategies to instructional delivery, ongoing assessment, interventions and the tracking of learning outcomes in a repeating complex system. The report looks at ways that technology can be embedded into each step of the instructional loop to improve student learning outcomes and eliminate the skill gap, providing some resources that might be used at different phases of the cycle.

The report cites differences in the use of technology tools to close the skill gap, looking at different income levels among countries which create different contexts and stating that there are fundamental social and economic problems, such as poverty, that impede learning and underlie the skills gap. Although the deficiencies in many undeveloped countries far surpass those found in the United States, it is my perspective that there are different contexts within the United States itself that must be acknowledged and addressed.

The importance of creativity, problem solving and innovation to the economic well-being of our nation and therefore, the employability of our workforce cannot be stressed enough. The pressure of standardized testing can lead to a standardized curriculum and instruction model that does not allow the classroom time for these skills to develop. Teachers caught in this dilemma are often driven to insure success on state tests at the cost of providing time for experimentation, reflection, and collaborative feedback. The report does suggest using technology for some of the foundational skills in order to free teacher time to provide instruction on competency and character skills.

In two of the examples from low income countries, technology was used to provide scripted lessons that were created centrally to under-trained teachers. My preference would be to more fully train teachers or provide a mentor/coach rather than a “turn the page” curriculum model.

One of the tenants of the article is the need to define and find a metric to assess each of these 21st century skills in order to compare countries skill level. Although I agree with the need to define the skills needed and provide training and resources to teachers so these skills can be embedded into the curriculum and instruction, the idea of an assessment to measure creativity or persistence fills me with dread. Paul Torrance developed a well-used test for creativity used to screen students for school gifted and talented programs. It is not a test that can be administered and interpreted without training. The idea of administering a standardized test which by definition is convergent in thinking to measure a thinking skill that is divergent by definition seems inappropriate and a major shortcoming of this report.

Alice Chen writes: "We all know that our digital natives are very at ease with technology. In fact, they’re in love with technology, but does that automatically make them digital proficient?

When I originally pondered this question, I began to realize that the 5 C's often discussed in education today - communication, collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, and citizenship - needed to be expanded to include these other areas as well: curation, copyright, character and connectedness."

Preparing to dip your foot into the social media pool? Anne Barretta, adjunct professor at William Paterson University and Ramapo College specializing in communications, recently shared 9 Rules of Etiquette for Academic Twitter Use that we found worth sharing.

(Looking into trying a different social media site? You'll find that the majority of rules still apply.)

Check these out, and, when you're ready to get down to the nitty-gritty, be sure to check out Atomic Learning's online training courses designed to help educators dive into some of the many popular social sites, including Twitter for Educators, Facebook for Educators, and YouTube for Educators.

Interesting take on creating engaging stories with this e-learning story template from SHIFT. Useful for anyone creating educational or learning material for online use. You can also download a FREE template.

Sometimes the most effective way you can make a difference to your marketing relies on you making small, positive tweaks. Ones you can implement on a daily basis.

To help you come up with something you can try out, we’ve asked some of the leading social media marketers of big brands for their secrets. They have divulged some of their daily practices that keep them at the top of their game, take notes....

Curate To Educate: From Online Courses to Full Learning Programs

New interesting tools make it possible to create online courses and full online learning programs, by drastically simplifying the design process while providing simple tools to curate and bring together valuable existing content already published online.

The first I'd like to bring to your attention is Classmill, which makes it very easy to create online courses by providing a very simple and intuitive interface and allowing the author to add with ease his own texts, as well as images, links and video clips coming from elsewhere on the web. Anyone can publish an online course and make it visible to everyone. Only those who register and join in can see the full contents and can participate in the integrated discussion area for the course.

The second one is Learnyst, which goes one step beyond Classmill by facilitating the creation of a full online school with multiple courses and the ability to charge for selected ones.

Both tools are extremely easy to use, and allow the assembly of existing materials, whether owned or produced by others.

This is an interesting trend as in the past most tools to deliver educational content relied on the author creating and posting only his own materials. The fact that you now can easily include valuable content published by others opens up the gates both for the curation of lots of existing content into useful learning courses as well as for the issue of whether and how to compensate curated content from others.

This economic issue though, does not preclude tons of free high-quality content to be re-used and showcased in many new free learning courses and it provides those who want to learn with even more non-commercial alternatives to master their favorite topics.

Takeaway: You are going to see more of these tools and more subject-matter experts create valuable learning resources by bringing together key relevant content produced by others while adding tangible value, perspective and context.

If you have a strong passion or expertise it's time to start thinking about building your own online school.

This handbook is a product of the Digital Commonwealth project which sought to facilitate a creative response to the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games. However, the handbook is designed to be of use to a wider range of individuals, community groups and third sector organisations interested in using digital media (blogs, audio, video and social media) to tell their stories. Please use and share!

The purpose of this article is simply to remove some of the negative connotations around smartphones and to consider new possibilities which we have at our disposal. In order for students to use smartphones in school responsibly, it is important that we set limits and rules beforehand.

With many teacher created clips and videos to specifically support mathematics and science - this could be a fabulous resource for staff to use with our students. Appears to be free to use, but does require to to 'register' with site.

Digital citizenship is not so different from traditional citizenship. We still need to guide students to be kind, respectful and responsible. What’s new is teaching them how to apply these values to the realities of the digital age.

Sharing your scoops to your social media accounts is a must to distribute your curated content. Not only will it drive traffic and leads through your content, but it will help show your expertise with your followers.

Integrating your curated content to your website or blog will allow you to increase your website visitors’ engagement, boost SEO and acquire new visitors. By redirecting your social media traffic to your website, Scoop.it will also help you generate more qualified traffic and leads from your curation work.

Distributing your curated content through a newsletter is a great way to nurture and engage your email subscribers will developing your traffic and visibility.
Creating engaging newsletters with your curated content is really easy.